@Zuby_Tech
Head Of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann said he'd actually pitched a PS5 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 early on in its development, but was told "no" by those in charge at Xbox. When Sony eventually asked Microsoft if it'd bring the series over to PlayStation, Xbox finally relented: "It was my idea, actually. With Flight Simulator 2020, we came out on PC first in August 2020. One year later, we shipped it on Xbox, and we found millions and millions of new fans on Xbox that had never seen the flight sim because they're just not PC gamers. A lot of them thought it was great, and a lot of them stayed." "In 2020, it was already 120 GB when we launched as a download. When we were in 2023, I looked at the install numbers, and it was 300 GB. Then we had our content roadmap, and there was so much new stuff that we were doing that we would be over a terabyte. I said "We need to do something," so we decided to make Flight Simulator 2024 and had the concept of a thin client. Our client is now 8 GB, and instead of putting everyone on your hard drive and making that download huge, we put everything in the cloud." "We spent a lot of time optimising for PS5 and making sure the controller works great." "That made it possible to go to other platforms, so I proposed, probably two and a half years ago, to go to PlayStation. It was probably a little bit before its time because I was told no. Then, somebody from Sony who grew up with flight simulation thought it would be a great addition to the Sony portfolio. They reached out proactively to our President, who then came back to me and said, "Hey, remember when we talked about the PlayStation thing a year ago? Sony is also interested."" "I think that really kicked off a whole avalanche of Xbox titles coming to PlayStation. Then, we worked on it. It took a while, as we had to obviously finish Flight Simulator 2024, which came out about a year ago. After that, we spent a lot of time optimising for PS5 and making sure the controller works great. We also worked on the VR execution, it's not quite there yet, but it's coming." "I hired a company I've worked with in the past called Climax Studios. I worked with them on Crackdown and some other games back in the day. I've been at Microsoft for a long time. I talked to the head of Climax, and they have a lot of experience doing PS5 work, so they did a lot of the work." "The main difference between PS5 Standard and PS5 Pro is the resolution. In standard, we're doing a 2560x1440 resolution upscaled to 3840x2160. On PS5 Pro, we are 3200x1800, so the resolution is quite a bit higher. It's actually one of the requirements, you need to either have a higher frame rate or resolution." "The nature of the game doesn't really allow it to be a constant 60 frames per second. In the worst case, you have an infinitely diverse environment, and you can go 70,000 feet up in the air and land. While we can hit 30 FPS consistently, we can't hit 60 FPS consistently. So then it became a resolution thing, and our resolution is almost native 4K. To hit 30 FPS consistently, we can't hit 60 FPS consistently. So then it became a resolution thing, and our resolution is almost native 4K." "Where we are on PlayStation right now, there is only a single device that's not a DualSense. The good news is, I get called by the hardware makers, and they ask if this is a long-term commitment. For them, it's super important that we don't make just a one-off product and then leave. I always say Flight Simulator is a hobby, and once you go somewhere, you're staying." "We made the decision to go expand the user base, so there's quite a few controllers now in development for PlayStation. It'll take some amount of time. The number of people on Xbox that use specialised controllers has increased, and now with PlayStation, I expect it to go similarly." "It was there from the beginning. Sony was super clear: they have a very dedicated VR audience that is excited about new VR games, and they were very clear that we would have a lot of support from that audience. Ultimately, VR is all about frame rates and making sure that comfort is there. So, the bare minimum you need to hit is 48 FPS, and ideally, you hit 60 FPS with dual rendering." "We have things like foveated rendering, which is basically focusing on where the eye is, and all the smart ways that people have come up with to optimize this. We're actually pretty close, but not 100% there, so we're going to spend a few more months optimizing. That's really the effort right now." "It's working now, as a matter of fact. I have it sitting right here, and it works, it's fun, and it looks amazing. But it's not quite ready for prime time. We talked about putting it out as a beta feature, use-at-your-own-risk kind of thing, but that didn't seem right. Let's just wait a few months and get it right, so then people can enjoy it."
